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April 2005

Phuket

Jeremy Koh
2005-11-05 11:45:47

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these monkeys. From here, we were driven back to our guesthouse in Patong. The rest of the day was spent walking around the Patong area and shopping.

On the third day, we woke up early to grab some sun on the beach before we left Patong for Phuket Town. The beach umbrellas and deck chairs cost slightly more early in the morning (100 baht) as compared to the afternoon (80 baht). In general, the Patong area of Phuket is extremely touristy. Everywhere you went, there would be people calling out to you to buy something, take the tuk-tuk or whatever. Also, food is slightly more expensive than in other places and in most cases, blander as they've been adapted to cater to the western palate. After we checked out of our guesthouse after 12 noon, we took one of the blue songthaew (like a minibus) to Phuket Town for only 20 baht.

When we arrived in Phuket Town, we could feel the difference immediately. Other than the tuk-tuk driver who kept bugging us and even tailed us when we got off the songthaew, there wasn't a lot of people who were bugging us to buy stuff and so on. Thus, you get the sense that Phuket Town is not so much for tourists and indeed, it wasn't. Other than the immediate area around Robinson and McDonald's, the rest of Phuket Town was quite devoid of tourists.

In Phuket Town, we checked into The Budget Hotel which is just behind the Thavorn Hotel on Thanon Rasada. The old Thavorn Hotel itself looks grand and opulent, though slightly decrepit, and it even has a museum on its ground floor which is open to the public. Overall, the design of the hotel harks back to a bygone era and if you stood still for a while, you could just imagine yourself back in the past. However, The Budget Hotel itself was much less grand. In fact, the first impression that Chuan Yew had of the hotel was that it was haunted. And indeed, it was not too much a stretch of the imagination to imagine a horror flick being shot here. The facade itself was plain and simple but it was the interior that tends to let your imagination run wild. An old, creaky elevator transported us to the fourth level and when the door opened, all we saw was a wide space with three dark corridors leading in separate directions. And as luck would have it, our room was right at the end of one of the corridors. Luckily, the room was clean and simple and we didn't encounter any spooks while we were there.

After checking in, we decided to explore Phuket Town. As our hotel was situated within the historic old district of Phuket Town, we decided to wander around its immediate vicinity. Nearby was the historic On-On Hotel which was featured in the "The Beach" and as we walked further, I found a quaint second-hand bookstore which sold books in various languages. As I quickly browsed through the racks, I decided to buy a book, "Gustavo y los miedos" for only 20 baht. Yes, it's a children's book but hey, my Spanish is so rusty that I can't even understand most of it. From here, we kept on walking and passed areas like the prison and various temples before we finally surrendered to the heat and decided to escape to the shopping malls around Thanon Tilok Uthit. At night, this area also has a night market with cheap food. There's also a night market near Thanon Kra and it's an interesting place to go because you won't see any tourists there.

Early next morning, we woke up early to take the tuk-tuk to the airport for 400 baht to catch our flight on Tiger Airways. Along the way, we also passed by many saffron-robed monks who were going around barefoot for their daily alms rounds. This was something that I wanted to see before when I was in Vientiane but I missed it, so this marks a great end to my Phuket trip.